Please help a Microshaft slave shake off the shackles and become a free man.

I have a Toshiba A100 laptop with WIdoze Vista Home Basic installed and is is a prize DOG. I see more of the disk activity light and the hourglass than any of the work I want to do. However, it is able to connect freely to the aging XP bow upstairs via my wireless LAN and read all of the shared folders.

Kanotix absolutely sparkles on my laptop - running as a Live USB system. I can "see" the XP box, I can "see" the shares - but when I try to access them I am asked for a user name and password and I have no idea what to enter. Do I use an XP user account, or a Kanotix User Account and ensure a corresponding account exists on the XP box or what?

There are User Accounts on the XP box - but the main one is set up with no password. Is that the problem? Or am I fighting a losing battle here?

Please help - I would dearly love to ditch the b**** that is Vista but I need access to those shares to do so. Any help would be dearly appreciated.